Romans 8:28-30
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
God Is Working All Things for Your Good
Last week I told you the Chinese parable about the poor farmer who lost his horse, but then gained six more, whose son broke his leg, but then didn’t have to go off to war. We would call that an emotional rollercoaster, but that stalwart farmer stayed patient throughout.
Today I want to tell you the story about Corrie ten Boom. She was a Dutch Christian born in the late 1800s who is most known for her work in sheltering and helping Jews escape Nazi persecution during WWII. She and her whole family were eventually caught and put into a concentration camp where both her father and her sister died. Corrie survived and would go on to write many things, among them this poem:
My life is but a weaving
Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He weaveth steadily.Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper
And I the underside.Not ‘til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And reveal the reason why.The dark threads are as needful
In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.He knows, He loves, He cares;
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those
Who leave the choice to Him.
For a woman who survived the Holocaust, these words are brimming with hope and confidence. For a woman who saw and experienced firsthand the sorrow and pain of this world, this poem exudes peace and patience. And while I can’t reach into her mind and tell you exactly what inspired these words, they sound an awful lot to me like what we just read from Romans 8: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.”
What Corrie captures so well in her poem is how often we can be too close, too in-the-moment, to see the bigger picture. I feel like more and more we have the ability to zoom in and analyze every minute detail of every problem that is going on all around this wide world. We can talk about it to death and hear so many diverse and divisive opinions about it, and it just magnifies and intensifies the issue. It’s so easy to lose sight of the bigger picture or even recognize that there is a bigger picture, i.e. that anyone can be in control of this chaotic world. As Corrie puts it, we only see the underside of the weaving, and it doesn’t look good.
But then Paul shares with us these words, and they’re perfectly suited for our situation. Paul reminds us that God works all things for our good – that he is in control – and even though we cannot see his plan or purpose now, one day we will. One day, God will flip that tapestry around and show us the beauty of the pattern he has been working this whole time.
God is working all things for your good. Maybe your pain and weakness now is equipping to help others with pain and weakness in the future. Maybe God has emptied your schedule so you can fill it up with him. Maybe God is filling your news feed with infuriating stories so that you can learn humility, compassion and flexibility. There are all kinds of ways that God can turn a curse into a blessing.
But even when we can’t see the good from the bad, we still can know that God is working all things for our good because of the plan, the purpose that God shares with us in words like these from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Paul talks about God’s foreknowledge and predestination. Those are big and imposing words. One Bible commentator said, “Heads and hearts have been broken over that doctrine,” but Luther reminds us that “this doctrine is not so incomprehensible as many think, but it is rather full of sweet comfort for the elect.”
So, rather than thinking about it in terms of “predestination,” I just want you to think of the word “choice”, because, even though Paul says that God “foreknew” you – that God knew you before you were born, before the creation of the world – Paul is not only referring to the fact that God knows all things. He is saying that God chose you before the creation of the world, and that is a message of pure Gospel comfort.
God does not wait to see how you turn out before he chooses you. God doesn’t make his decisions based on your behavior or in view of your future faith. No, before you said or did or thought a thing, God chose you to be his own. He had a plan and a purpose for you. His will, i.e. his desire, was that you “be conformed to the image of his Son, that [Jesus] might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” In other words, God’s eternal choice was that he wanted you to be part of his family. God chose to adopt you as his sons and daughters. He made that decision before he created this world. And he put that eternal election into action by doing what Paul writes next, i.e. by calling you and justifying you and glorifying you.
It’s a wonderful thought to think that God loved me before I was born, but there is a nagging question, “How can I be sure? Are the butterflies I feel in my stomach the Holy Spirit at work in me, or is it just the burrito I ate last night?” Paul removes all doubt when he says, “Those he predestined, he also called.”
You don’t have to guess whether God has chosen you. You don’t have to rely on your gut to know that God loves you. He tells you! He has called you. And God’s call is not some mystical, mysterious movement that we have to try to unravel or discover. God’s call is audible; he speaks to you in his Word. Every Sunday when we read these lessons they’re meant for you. God is speaking to you.
He wants you to know that he has chosen you from eternity and has acted on that choice by sending people to share that message with you, to let you know that he has justified you through his Son. And this is maybe the part that hits home for me the most.
I don’t know about you, but as great as it is thinking about God thinking about me before I was a glint in my parents’ eyes, it puts pressure on me. I feel like I have to be worthy of his attention. I get paranoid that I am constantly letting him down. All this time that God has spent loving me is wasted on a guy who can’t live up to expectations.
But Paul says, “Those he called, he also justified.” The central message of the Bible is justification; it’s the good news that God forgives your sins in Jesus, which tells you that you cannot disqualify yourself from God’s choice. There is nothing you can do that will make God love you less. He sent his Son to die on a cross for your sins, and as a direct result he doesn’t think about your sins anymore; they have been taken care of by Jesus.
You don’t have to worry that you haven’t been chosen; God has called you. You don’t have to worry that your sins will make God love you less; God has justified you. You don’t have to worry that some unforeseen circumstance will stand in the way of you going to heaven, because “those he justified, he also glorified.”
God’s love for you began before the world did, and it will continue long after this world ends. Your future is so certain, in fact, that Paul speaks about it in the past tense, as if it has already happened. “Those he justified, he also glorified.” Your future in heaven is not something to wonder about or wish for. Your future with God is not in question; it’s his guarantee to you because he chose you from eternity and called you by the Gospel and justified you through Jesus.
Our life may feel like the underside of a tapestry right now – all frayed and tattered and chaotic – but we’re only seeing part of the picture and one side of the story. God is on the other side working all things for your good, weaving your sorrow and hardship into beauty and glory. We may not understand the place that pain and problems have in this picture, but God promises that they’re all part of his plan and purpose for you, to claim you as his children and to bring you to the glory of his heavenly kingdom.
When you find yourself in those inglorious moments (whether that means you lose your horse, your son breaks his leg, you wind up in a concentration camp, or feeling helpless and hopeless in a global pandemic, community unrest, domestic dispute or whatever it may be) – when you find yourself in those inglorious moments, think back on this promise and know that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” Amen.